


and you will find me, friend

by parkadescandal



Series: as long as you champion [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Coming of Age, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 22:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15253713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkadescandal/pseuds/parkadescandal
Summary: In which Riku's got some "life goals v. wife goals" feelings to work out after Terra comes to town.





	and you will find me, friend

_In your hand, take this key._

_So long as you have the makings..._

_then through this simple act of taking_

_its wielder you shall one day be._

_And you will find me, friend--_

_no ocean will contain you then._

_No more borders around, or below, or above_

_so long as you champion the ones you love._

  
  


When Riku’s father comes to collect them Sora is on the verge of spilling the beans, so when he asks if they’d had fun out on the play island today, Riku responds brightly, 

“Yeah! We played with our toy swords!”

At which Sora seems to fall in line. Riku doesn’t want to talk about the man he’d spoken with, petrified of breaking an oath he hadn’t even grown into yet, or even had the time to process. It was so exciting! He smiles slightly at the thought. As they scramble into the boat, Riku watches his dad pause for a moment to look at him, then give him an affectionate pat on the head. Sora does his absolute very best to cover up a yawn.

On the mainland, they’ve said their temporary goodbyes, and Riku’s dad sends him ahead inside so he can shepherd Sora in the general direction of home. Riku barely notices—he’s replaying every detail of the special promise he’d made, still feeling the metal of that big key in his hand, and thinking of the tall man who’d put it there and of his bright eyes and big arms and soft words that he tries his hardest to memorize: _take this key…its wielder you will one day be… no ocean will contain you then…_

He feels a little warmth inside. He has something new to protect now.

*

They’re building sandcastles at the shore, him, Sora, and the new girl. Well, not new so much anymore. Riku likes Kairi. She’s got this funny little laugh and she’s always got new ideas of fun games to play and Sora really likes her too, and they all like to make each other laugh but Sora does the most and sometimes Riku even forgets to laugh because he’s waiting for Sora to make Kairi laugh first.

But now Sora’s put himself in charge of collecting decorations for the sandcastles and has run off with the bucket to collect the prettiest shells he can find. Riku’s abandoned his sand kingdom in favor watching Kairi, deep in focus as she adds details to hers.

“Can I help?” he asks, and she looks up and gives him a big grin and nods.

“You can help me make the tower!” she says, scooching over to clear him some space.

“I’ve never seen a castle before,” says Riku. After a moment, Kairi responds,

“I have, I think.”

Riku looks up from his messy turret.

“Kairi, do you remember anything about where you came from?”

She looks at him, a little concerned.

“Little bits. It’s really hard to think back. I know it was different than here.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I dunno.”

“It’s okay.” Riku piles some more sand around the base of his sand tower, then says, “Y’know, I saw someone else once who I don’t think was from around here. Do you…do you think maybe he came from another world, too? Maybe from the same place you came from?”

“Probably!” she grins real wide again. “I think it would be nice to know someone else who got here just like me!”

He smiles back at her. They contentedly continue working on their sandcastle until Sora comes tearing up with a rattling bucket and trips on his own sandal, sending seashells flying. Kairi and Riku both giggle this time.

*

One day Riku begins to wake earlier, traveling to the play island at the break of dawn with single-minded purpose. In the morning, he can begin searching the island’s every incline for proof of something foreign, something better. Here in the daybreak, that yearning has no audience— you couldn’t even call it a secret. He pushes and climbs and swims and relishes the output of it, knowing and hoping and needing it to translate to a strength for something bigger.

When the sun settles in he’s reflecting at the paopu tree, waiting for the other kids to arrive. In that transition he almost forgets the fervent hunt for a way out—he’s got everything he needs right here.  


* 

He falls asleep one night conjuring up every detail of the man who’d conscripted him with some silent oath into his supposed destiny, having long since resolved to be just like him. When he wakes he is still dreamily trying to place every detail—big arms and heady chest, a strong jaw that he thinks about reaching out to touch—

Wait.

Wide awake now, Riku takes a deep breath. He wanted to be more like this man with each passing day. He wanted his strength and his purpose, the _adventure_ . What brought him there? Who were the friends _he_ wanted to protect? But now, after so many years, it didn’t feel like enough. He didn’t just want to get to know him. He wanted to be close to him.

He chooses to ignore this epiphany as he gets ready to leave the house and takes off towards his boat at full speed. There’s only a short period of time remaining where he can have the play island to himself.

When had this happened? He had worked so hard to become physically strong that it seemed something else had crept in in its wake.

Later, when he’s contemplating by the tree again, he’s startled when Sora comes to take his place next to where he’s sitting. Riku glances over but is suddenly terrified to meet his eyes, scared he’ll betray yet another emotion he didn’t know he’d had.

“Hey. I didn’t scare you, did I?” Sora asks.

“Of course not. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About… do you remember a long time ago, when we were little? We were playing out here and this lady we’d never seen before came to talk to us.”

“Yeah! Didn’t she tell me to watch out for you? That was kinda weird. But she was nice. And pretty. Hey,” Sora nudges him with an elbow. “Are you thinking about her because she was pretty?”

“No! Shut up.” Sora turns to give Riku a mocking grin, but Riku turns away. “Do you remember the day before that?”

“I think so. We always did pretty much the same thing.”

“Yeah,” says Riku. “Just like now. But remember that other guy?”

“Oh yeah! Didn’t he stop to talk to you? You still never told me what he said to you!” Sora pouts and crosses his arms.

“Wow, are you still upset about it? Don’t even worry about it, I can’t even remember,” he lies.

“Were you trying to?”

“I guess so.”

They sit in silence for a moment longer.

“So wait…you didn’t think she was pretty?”

“I said shut up about it!”

“Jeez, okay.”

Riku watches him glance over almost nervously, and realizes that he’s tensed up. Ridiculous. They tease each other all the time. Why is he getting upset about it now? It’s not like it matters that he didn’t even notice. He loosens up.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have made fun.” He smiles. No damage done. “Hey, you wanna spar? I could use some practice.”

“Practice getting beat? Then sure.”

“Hey!” Sora shouts, but he’s not even upset.

“Okay. Have it your way, then.”

Sora laughs and leaps down from the tree, puts his hands at his hips, and grins brightly up at him. Riku slips coming down from the tree.

For the first time in months, he is thoroughly trounced in a play fight. He couldn’t seem to shake that inexplicable rush of warmth in his chest.

*

Dusk is coming. It’s the first full day they’ve worked on the raft. They haven’t made too much progress, but it was enough to be proud of. Riku sits by the shore to admire their progress. Sora, predictably, had lain back for a break and is now gently snoring. Riku laughs softly, giving Kairi an admonishing shrug as she comes to sit beside him.

“There’s always tomorrow,” she says cheerfully.

“And the day after that. And the day after that one.”

She smiles.

Riku feels a wave of affection for her like he hasn’t felt in a while. They hadn’t so much grown apart lately as they had just continued by rote, but something had been different lately, and he knew she could tell. It didn’t matter. He puts an arm around her in a half hug and she leans into it comfortably.

“But we will go,” she says. “I just know it’s gonna happen.”

“Of course,” Riku says, and reaches over with his free hand to grab hers. “Between the three of us…well, the two of us,” he rolls his eyes and she laughs, “we’ll get it done for sure.”

“Our construction company is still a work in progress.”

He laughs again. On an impulse, he lets go of her hand and cups her chin in his palm and turns her face towards his so that they look one another in the eyes. She stares back at him quizzically. He starts to speak, but stops. Something doesn’t feel right. In fact, he feels nothing at all.

He lets go and pulls back, stands up and steps away. She blinks, but doesn’t say a word.

“I’m going home,” he says. “The tide’s coming in. If it were up to me I’d let a nice big wave wake him up,” he gestures lazily at Sora, obliviously napping on, “but I’m sure you’ll get him home safe and dry.”

“…I will,” she says, head cocked to one side. “I’ll see you later.”

Riku gives a final wave and heads to the dock, choosing not to turn around and acknowledge Kairi staring after him.

*

After choosing the darkness, sometimes Riku dreams, and sometimes in those dreams he’ll see a vaguely familiar figure in his periphery, lurking in the Realm of Darkness. Sensing distress, he’ll turn, see no one, and wake, inevitably feeling like he’s just missed something important.

*

“Who’s there?” Roxas says, taking a step deeper into the alabaster entryway of Castle Oblivion. Roxas drops the hand that had been clutching his own head. Riku sighs. He’s got several options, he should probably play it safe--but then there is the telltale sound of Roxas summoning the Keyblade he shouldn’t have.

Riku steps forward. So it must be true. He really is his Nobody.

“Let’s make this quick,” says Roxas. “I’ve got somewhere to be.”

“If it’s Xion you’re looking for, don’t bother,” Riku responds. “She’s already made her decision.”

“ _What_ decision? What are you talking about?” Roxas yells. Riku hears the rattle of the keychain as the Keyblade wavers unsteadily in Roxas’s hands, not from fear but from agony. The Castle is providing too many memories and too quickly. Riku takes a chance.

“Can you feel him, Roxas?” he says softly.

“I don’t know what _anyone_ is _talking about_!” Roxas falls to his knees. His weapon vanishes. Riku strides over to meet him, and extends a hand.

“C’mon,” he says. “Together, we can do it.”

Roxas hesitates, taking deep breaths in and out for a moment. He takes the hand extended to him, now steady.

“I know you,” Roxas says evenly.  

“Of course you do. You’re my be--”

“His friend?” Roxas laughs, tearing away his hand from Riku’s. “Some best friend you are. You’re the reason he even ended up here in the first place.”

Riku clenches his fist.

“I guess you’re right about that. But I guess you could also say I’m here to make amends.”

“Like I care.”

“Not to you.”

“Oh, what’s wrong, Riku? I thought you liked games?”

Blasphemy. Before he’s conscious of it, he’s drawn Soul Eater and swung. Roxas blocks the blow but stumbles backwards, collapsing.

“So we’re doing this now, huh,” says Roxas. A swift hand change and--swing, balance lost, Riku is involuntarily brought to his knees to meet Roxas at his level.

“We really shouldn’t fight, not anymore,” Roxas says, grabbing Riku by the arm as he tries to swing away from a position practically on top of him. Insanely, Roxas uses his free hand to put a palm to Riku’s jaw in an intimate caress. Disarmed, Riku freezes entirely.

“What--”

“You’ve been right outside the corner of his eye for years now,” Roxas says. “Every time he turned around, there you were, staring. I don’t think he got it, but I can put two and two together.”

With that, Roxas pulls loose the string of Riku’s blindfold, giving himself visual confirmation that he’s stolen the upper hand when he sees fear reflected in his eyes.

“I--I don’t know what you’re talking abou--” 

“C’mon, Riku. Didn’t you say together? Let’s go home, the both of us.”

In the past few weeks Riku had never lost sight of his mission, but it was all he could do not to succumb to the heartache of missing his friends. In Naminé he’d found solace in the echo of Kairi that reverberated around her, but as he worked to recover his other missing piece he would realize in terror that he couldn’t remember the shape of his best friend’s face.

Until now. In Roxas’s stare Riku had the opportunity to remember just what he had forgotten of Sora, of the inescapable brightness he had still somehow lost.

“What about it, Riku? I thought you weren’t scared of the darkness. Join me instead.”

“ _No_!” Riku shouts, taking a swing to knock this imposter out once and for all, but this thorough rattling handicapped him worse than the blindfold ever could. All Roxas has to do is roll away, and he blocks the next swing with his blade just as easily.

“Pathetic,” Roxas says, parrying every subsequent swing. “It’s no wonder he left you behind that door.”

He moves in for the killing blow. Panicking, Riku accepts defeat and conjures himself a path back to safety while sending up a lobby of dark magic to buy himself the time. Roxas is staggered as Riku trips backward into the portal to collapse directly on top of a table in one of the mansion’s many desolate rooms. Its contents go flying, as does all the wind from his body.

Not a moment passes before he collects a white rage in his gut. He screams. He blasts the table forward and it cleaves in two. He screams again, enraged even more at this loss of control, unchecked dark magic causing more destruction until he hears his name called from the doorway. He wheels around to look a horrified Naminé in the eyes.

“Ri--”

“How much longer, Naminé?” he shouts at her.

“Riku, you have to sto--”

“Castle Oblivion! He knows him, Naminé! He knew! _How much longer?_ ”

He strides forward to meet her, coated in that ugly darkness, sobbing furiously, and before he can close in, Naminé has spread out her arms, and the last thing he hears is her yelling at him to _stop it!_ before her power has felled him into a restorative sleep of his own.

In his dream he sits on the shore of the play island, listening to the waves that gently lap at him. He thinks of the man who had dared show him a shortcut to everything he had ever wanted, of the sureness of his grip, of his lies about the untapped powers within his grasp only if he would champion the ones he loved. He weeps. There is still an ocean in between.

*

Riku is having difficulty denying his heart. Troublesome, to say the least. He swipes the snow of the mountains from his coat and out of old habit reaches to take down the hood, but stops. Catching his reflection while he wears the face of Ansem isn’t exactly his favorite thing. There is some positive emotion lurking in this face that he doesn’t care to analyze when he sees a reminder of his most dire mistake.

“I thought your goal was _not_ to be noticed,” drawls Axel from wherever he’d just decided to appear. Infuriating.

“Don’t have anything better to do than to follow me around?”

“You seem to forget. We have mutual goals.”

“That are mutually exclusive. Don’t worry about it. I needed to be there.”

His heart had told him so. And Sora was safe, and alive, and gently steered in the correct direction once again, provided the Organization’s No. II didn’t have anything to say about it. So perhaps he’d been careless. It didn’t matter. He’d gotten what he’d needed.

“Did you? You’ll get caught, sooner or later. Or are you trying to force your own hand?”

“I’m not worried. I’ve known him my whole life. I can keep a secret from him.”

“Can you, now?” Axel smiles. “It seems like you’ve had plenty of material to practice with.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s bad with your own secrets,” Axel says, presumably disappearing from whence he came  


*

“One is safe. For now,” Yen Sid says gravely as he sends away one of the three magic columns he has conjured before him. “The other two are in imminent danger, and may already have fallen. We must find them quickly and assist them, but take caution.”

Yen Sid then conjures the images of the lost wielders. Riku gasps.

“I—I know them. From a long time ago. Who are they?”

Yen Sid raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps they did not take heed of their master’s warning not to meddle in the affairs of other worlds lest there be dangerous consequences. No doubt not the only thing they’ve strayed from Eraqus’s teachings.”

“He’s—he’s the reason I wield the keyblade,” he gestures at the image of the serious looking man now presumably lost to the darkness. “He’s the one who gave me the power. I promised—”

“Ah. Terra. He and his companion, Master Aqua. It seems we may be fortunate that they interfered, Master Riku.”

Riku looks up, startled. He still hasn’t gotten used to the title.

“How can we help?”

*

“Terra!” Riku has taken it upon himself to take a detour to darkness in the realm of sleep. Where else to find a dormant heart? “Terra!”

It’s suddenly silent. Without a doubt, he knows he’ll find what he’s looking for when he turns around. Riku stands face to face with the man who had slingshot his destiny into a completely different trajectory.

“It’s you. You’re the one I chose,” Terra says cautiously.

“Yes. Thank you,” Riku says, holding out the charm that Yen Sid had given him to signify the Mark of Mastery. “Thank you.”

This was evidently the last thing Terra expected to see, face caught in a rictus of shock. Only fair. It had been well over 10 years, and Riku knew all too well that time operated differently here. He looks at Terra, taking in the details that time had lost. Most surprisingly, he finds that memory had omit something curious. Terra couldn’t have been much older than Riku himself was right now. This entire time, his fate had revolved around a promise made to nothing but a boy. It seemed appropriate.

“I’m glad,” Terra says finally. “But someone like you, someone so full of light shouldn’t be here.”

“ _Light_?” Riku sputters.

“Of course,” Terra says earnestly. “Look. I don’t have long.”

“It’s okay. Terra—I’m just here to tell you that we’re coming. We’re here for you.”

Terra smiles sadly, puts a hand over his chest. “I know. If it’s not too late. Please…tell Aqua, tell Ven…” he trails off, terror suddenly clouding his face. “You have to go.”

“Yes, soon, but what is it? Tell me.”

“Tell them ‘soon’. That I will be with them soon. I promise.”

“They’ll know!” calls out Riku. Before Terra is completely obscured by the darkness once again, Riku sees an object glimmer orange in his hand.

*

They’re at the tree again as the sun sets, as they always have been, as they likely always will be. _Nothing’s changed, huh. Nope, nothing will._ A final reprieve before what may be their most dangerous journeys yet.

“Y’know, I don’t think I ever told you I was sorry,” says Riku, breaking a pensive silence. “Not really. I’m sorry for what I did to you. It wasn’t fair to you.”

“Oh, don’t worry ab--oh. Thank you. But I forgave you ages ago. I just...I just missed you.”

Riku smiles softly.

“That...that means a lo--”

His thought is interrupted when Sora propels himself into a full impact embrace.

“I really did,” he mumbles from where he’s buried his face in Riku’s chest. “I just wanted to see you. I missed you.”

“Oh,” Riku says. He hugs him back. “I...I missed you too.”

After a moment, Sora pulls away, scrubbing a tear from his eye. He grins.

“But I do forgive you.”

“I was getting worried there, for a minute.” Riku takes his place on the limb of the paopu tree. “Hey.”

“Hmm,” Sora says, climbing up to sit by his side.

“Do you remember when we were kids, and you used to give Kairi those long hugs just so you could smell her hair?”

“How--what does--why’d you gotta bring that up?”

“No reason.” Riku huffs a laugh. “Just reminded me is all.”

They sit shoulder to shoulder well after it gets dark.  

**Author's Note:**

> This has been kicking around in my head for about a year, since I first got my hands on Birth by Sleep and did 2 playthroughs in rapid succession. I sobbed like a baby when Terra showed up to the Islands, and then I had questions. Why is Terra so Buff and Angry and Handsome? Who else from this franchise is also unnecessarily Buff and Angry and Handsome? Could these two things...possibly be connected...in more ways that one??? 
> 
> My Twitter fan account where I do a lot of screaming in the void to the three people that follow me is @deathdrpdistant. If you enjoyed any part of this, please don't be afraid to come scream with me--I've got no chill. I just want more fandom friends. 
> 
> I'm tooling around with the draft of the coda to this in my head--basically where Sora goes through most of the same thing, just like almost a decade later, in case you were wondering if it were ever going to Go Somewhere. Yes. Slowly but surely and fluffily. 
> 
> A more accurate summary of this story is from this meme that's been going around recently: https://twitter.com/thefarplanes/status/1009232987999830016


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